Sunday, December 22, 2013

The current Canadian Government's cavalier attitude towards researchers in general, and those who toil in the public service in particular, has been a topic of great frustration for many of my cohorts. A review of Chris Turner's new book, The War on Science : Muzzled Scientists and Willful Blindness in Stephen Harper's Canada, just published by Ivan Semeniuk in the Globe and Mail, interestingly enough opens with... who might have guessed? A governor of New France!

"It’s fair to say that the bewigged visage of Roland-Michel Barrin de La Galissonière does not loom large in the Canadian psyche. A naval commander and governor of New France in the mid-18th century, La Galissonière brought the spirit of the French Enlightenment to the new world and a passion for science to his colonial duties. For two short years, from 1747 to 1749, he was a whirlwind of inquisitiveness, directing his officers to observe, collect, chart, record and otherwise thoroughly document the natural history of the interior.""Then La Galissonière was recalled to Europe and the administration of what would eventually become British North America was left to those of a less empirical bent. Not until Sanford Fleming arrived from Scotland a century later was there as strong a push in Canada to be at the leading edge of scientific discovery."
Those are Semeniuk's words. A quick leafing through Turner's book, portions of which are available via Google Books, shows him beginning with Champlain and going on to state that La Galissonière's brief tenure the French colony was "a centre of Enlightenment scholarship" and "at the Enlightenment's vanguard" (a bit of an overstatement?). But these seventeenth and eighteenth-century origins of what he calls the "Scientific Tradition in Canadian Government", as well as those of the nineteenth, are dispensed with in a mere two pages in a book whose focus is squarely contemporary.

Those interested in the subject matter should really keep an eye out for Chris Parsons' forthcoming book, Cultivating a New France: Knowledge, Empire and Environment in the French Atlantic World, 1600 – 1760.
P.-F.-X.

Friday, December 6, 2013

I agonized over whether to blog about this or not over the last week. Sotheby's was offering up in its December 5th sale two significant documents. The first was a lovely manuscript map of Louisbourg by a certain sieur Lartigue, entitled "Carte topographique du Port et de la Ville de Louisbourg assiégé par les Anglais pendant les mois de Juin et Juillet 1758"; the second was an intriguing two-part journal of said siege and its aftermath, totaling some 180 pages, penned by an anonymous officer of the Régiment de Cambis. As far as I know, this journal had not previously been available to researchers; I couldn't find it quoted anywhere. The auctioneer's estimate for the map was of $15,000-$20,000 USD, and for the journal was of $8,000-$12,000 USD.

It's one thing to blog about a forthcoming auction and call out the auctioneers for an outlandish overvaluation of a lot's historical and monetary value (readers may remember an earlier sortie). But in a case such as this one, where the manuscripts for sale are of exceptional interest, to make a big deal out of it before the sale essentially means giving free publicity to the auctioneer and the consigner -- and potentially contributing to raising the sale price beyond the means of the most deserving institutions. So, having agonized, I thought I'd best bite my tongue.

I'm now overjoyed to report that the journal was acquired by Library and Archives Canada. Yes, the same LAC I was disparaging in a recent post for not making any acquisitions as of late. A wind of change rises? You can read the government's proud announcement here. LAC paid $40,625 USD, or about four times the estimate. This appears to be a deal, since from what I can tell the same two-part journal was sold by French auction house Piasa as recently as 2010 for 51,345 euros, or about $70,000. Well done, LAC!

PS: The map, meanwhile, sold for almost seven times its high estimate: $137,000 USD!

Monday, November 25, 2013

The Globe and Mail reported on Saturday that the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library at the University of Toronto has acquired a trove of 233 letters written by James Wolfe to his parents between 1740 and 1759. The price? 1.5 million, which the library managed to raise with the assistance of Helmhorst Investments and the Movable Cultural Property Directorate at Canadian Heritage. Christies brokered the sale for what the Globe describes as an "unidentified British family" -- which I presume to be the Warde family, descendants of Wolfe's friend George Warde, who lately have taken steps to divest themselves of several valuable heirlooms. ﻿﻿

Photo: Globe and Mail.

This is a great score for the Fisher Library. Yet two thoughts dampen my enthusiasm somewhat. The first is that the Canadian purchase was made despite efforts to keep the documents in Great Britain. A good overview of this collection's importance as ascertained by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest, can be found here. In light of this, Britain’s culture minister imposed a two-month ban on the export, in the hope that a British buyer might come forward to match or exceed the price offered. None was found, and on Sept. 30th the minister approved the removal to Canada. Canada's gain, in this sense, is Britain's loss. Where does a collection of the sort belong? To whomever has the deepest pockets? I'm not entirely convinced that this is the best criteria.

The second thought that crossed my mind, speaking of where a collection of the sort might belong: where was Library and Archives Canada in all of this? Were they approached by Christies? Did they show any interest? Did they make any attempt to raise funds for the purchase? In other words, is the U of T's good news evidence of the ongoing bad news over at LAC?

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Over in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, an outdoor model of Fort Augusta was dedicated last weekend. Turning to Wikipedia in order to look up some basic facts about the fort's history, I was amused to learn that "Fort Augusta was a fat turd in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, in the upper Susquehanna Valley from the time of the French and Indian War to the close of the cheese." Thank you for the gift of laughter, Wikipedia! I wonder how long it will be before someone fixes the offending entry.

In more serious fort news, six wooden pieces of timber from Fort Edward were repatriated to the Rogers Island Visitors Center in the village of Fort Edward, New York. Accidentally ripped out by Hudson River dredgers four years ago, they had until now been in storage at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vergennes, Vermont.

In sadder fort news, Fort Necessity was one of five national parks in western Pennsylvania shuttered by the partial federal government shutdown last month. About two thousand people would have visited the site of an early battle in the French and Indian War during the sixteen days of the shutdown.

Meanwhile, over in Cape Breton, a former Parks Canada archaeologist expresses worries over the apparent lack of careful archaeological planning around the construction of a new walking trail near the Fortress of Louisbourg. A backhoe preparing the ground for the trail smashed into some early eighteenth-century house foundations. Ooops!

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Over at Active History, Katie McGee draws our attention to an anniversary which had not crossed my mind: the passing of Reuben Gold Thwaites (1853-1913), general editor of the famed Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. Good catch! A minor correction, though, is required. The year in question was not "the same year of the final publication of his seventy-two volume" magnum opus; the final seventy-first, seventy-second and seventy-third volumes were all published in 1901.﻿﻿﻿

The Challenge : Transcribing and translating the original Jesuit Relations and related documents.

﻿﻿Katie sums up very well the remarkable value of the Thwaites edition of the Jesuit Relations, but I can't resist adding a few thoughts of my own. My first has to do with the care that should be exercised in relying on this source. The quality of the English translation of the French, Latin and Italian text is excellent overall, but this is not to say that it is perfect. There are a number of small but consequential mistranslations, which in some cases have echoed unchecked through the secondary literature. Best to always refer back to the transcriptions of the original language, which thanks to a solid editorial vision can be found on the page opposite the translation.

Another thought: why not take this opportunity to foreground the man behind the book? I would bet you, dear readers, that among even the most dilligent users of the Thwaites edition of the Jesuit Relations, there are very few who know anything about Thwaites' background. Born at Dorchester, Massachusetts, he was interestingly enough the son of two Yorkshire immigrants -- not one of those Boston Brahmins, like his elder Parkman. At age thirteen, young Thwaites moved with his parents to a farm in Omro near
Oshkosh, Wisconsin. After working as a
farmhand and going to public school, he taught elementary classes and instructed himself in a range of collegiate subjects.Later he spent a couple of years as a special student at Yale,
where he studied English lit, economic history, and international law.Thwaites had begun to write for newspapers in Wisconsin. He became a staff member of the Oshkosh times, and soon moved on to Madison to serve as city
editor and later managing editor of the Wisconsin State Journal.He married in 1882 and
the following year had a son, Frederick, who incidentally would go on to teach geology at
the University of Wisconsin. Thwaites for his part could not resist the call of Clio. He was persuaded to become assistant
corresponding secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, and then its secretary in 1887.
﻿

The Man : Reuben Gold Thwaites. That is
a dandy necktie, I must say. What the picture
doesn't show is that Thwaites was known for
taking off his shoes and easing into a pair of
slippers upon arriving at the office every morning.

Thwaites revealed himself an energertic and visionary administrator, on top of being an erudite scholar and a fluent writer and editor. Louise Phelps Kellogg, who served as senior research assistant at the Historical Society, described him as “never too busy to discuss the value of placing a comma correctly.” Another acquaintance declared: “Energy, thy name is Thwaites”.Because of his command
of the subject matter, good nature and sense of humour, he elicited a measure of devotion that his successors
at the head of the Historical Society apparently found difficult to match. He died suddenly on October 22, 1913, a day before his society's annual meeting. Now, I would also bet you that it occurs to rather few users of the Thwaites edition of the Jesuit Relations that behind the man there was a veritable legion. A quick glance at the title pages of the first and last volume of the series reveal the identity of some of these collaborators. Besides Thwaites, who is credited as general editor, we find the names of several other editors: Finlow Alexander, Percy Favor Bicknell, John Cutler
Covert (all for the French), William Frederic Giese (Latin); and of translators: Crawford Lindsay, William Price, Hiram
Allen Sober (French), Mary Sifton Pepper (French and Italian), John Dorsey
Wolcott (Latin).Emma Helen Blair served
as Assistant Editor, and Victor Hugo Paltsits as “Bibliographical Advisor”. Edward P. Alexander, in The Museum in America: Innovators and Pioneers, allows us to add a seemingly uncredited name to the list, that of Annie Amelia Nunns, who eventually became
Thwaites’ executive secretary, and whose work, Alexander reports, involved toiling on the Relations “long hours, often at night”. Louise Phelps Kellogg surely contributed something to the project as well. Surveying the front pages of the other seventy-one issues might reveal other names. It is interesting to note the number of women among these collaborators working in the shadows of the great man. Some of them, like Blair and Kellogg, were formidable historians in their own right.

On this hundredth anniversary, then, three cheers for Thwaites and Company!

Thursday, October 31, 2013

A movie entitled "Dark Frontier" is currently in pre-production. Its producers don't seem to have a website, but they have been allowing glimpses of the filming via a devoted Facebook page. They promised something special in time for Halloween, but it has yet to materialize.

The storyline, which is apparently in the midst of revisions, follows a group of frontier spies on the Braddock expedition who go out ahead of the troops "to do recon on the Indian threat." And then, judging by the poster, scary things start occurring. This sounds promising. And by promising I mean terrible.

Who knows, though? It might make for a pleasantly worthwhile surprise after all.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

The Kaskaskia-Cahokia Trail is one of this year's winners of the Richard H. Driehaus Preservation Awards. These awards are given out by Landmarks Illinois, a nonprofit group that advocates for the protection of historic properties, to recognize excellence in preservation. In 2000, the Kaskaskia-Cahokia Trail had in fact been listed on the association's list of 10 Most Endangered Landmarks.
﻿

Fort de Chartres, just west of Prairie du Rocher, in Randolph County, Illinois.

The trail, which as its name suggests linked Kaskaskia and Cahokia in the Pays des Illinois, is first mentioned in 1718 in conjunction with the building of Fort de Chartres and shows up for the first time on maps in the 1730s.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

As my Canadian readers will know, the Speech From the Throne dropped today. For non-Canadian readers: this is the moment when the monarch or, usually, her representative the governor general, reads a prepared speech to members of Parliament, outlining the government's agenda for the coming session. Would you believe that New France was mentioned?

As we look confidently to the future, we draw great strength from our past. Beginning with our Aboriginal peoples, Canada’s story is one of risk, sacrifice, and rugged determination. From the founding of New France, to the fight for Canada in the War of 1812; from the visionary achievement of Confederation, to our victory at Vimy Ridge, Canadians have repeatedly triumphed over long odds to forge a great country, united and free.

It is a story we recall with wonder and recount with pride. A story of how different provinces founded a federation in which our distinct strengths advance our unity. A federation in which Canada's two national languages position us uniquely in the world; where francophones thrive and celebrate a unique culture, in solidarity with fellow Canadians.

No comment.

Update (10 Oct.): Christopher Moore gives a more thorough overview of history in the Throne Speech over on his blog.

Sunday, October 6, 2013

October 7th marks the 250th anniversary of the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Some readers may recall the worries, expressed earlier this year, that the anniversary would go by unnoticed. While the Canadian Government has not deigned to make any commemorative effort, other parties have thankfully stepped up to the plate. Quite a few of them, actually.

Over at Active History, a splendid series of short essays introduced by Tom Peace looks at the Proclamation from various angles. In Winnipeg the anniversary was marked by four days of lectures and activities organised by the University of Winnipeg, the University of Manitoba, and several other partners. A related lecture was given at the University of Winnipeg. A round-table was held in Boston. The Union of Ontario Indians will be holding a ceremony and launching a publication. Thomas Mulcair, leader of the Opposition, hosted a commemorative event with Aboriginal leaders at his residence on the eve of the anniversary. The Land Claims Coalition is holding a day-long symposium on the subject at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. The CMC will have a copy of the document on display for a month or so. The Assembly of First Nations is hosting a morning press conference (and Shawn Atleo, its head, has been giving interviews on the subject).

Actually, saying that Candian Government has not deigned to make any effort is not entirely fair, for Aboriginal and Northern Affairs Canada is involved in a few of these events. It was a partner of the events held in Winnipeg, for instance, and Minister Bernard Valcour minister will be attending the Land Claims Coalition symposium. But its involvement appears to have been entirely reactive.

Oh, and by the way, Idle No More activists have planned a global day of action (#Oct7Proclaim).

Friday, September 27, 2013

I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but last month Toronto Star publisher John Cruickshank, in an opinion piece criticical of Prime Minister Steven Harper for his willingness to allow the sale of a portion of the country's telecommunications spectrum to the Americans, writes: "What is the Prime Minister trying to achieve with this degree of market manipulation not seen since Intendant Jean Talon ran New France for Louis XIV more than four centuries ago? He says he is trying to make the free market more effective." What a dubious and bizarre comparison.

In a more expansive but equally provocative vein, Greg Kennedy published a piece entitled "Lessons from the past: 'So What is Government for Anyway?'" over at Active History. In it Greg, who teaches at the Université de Moncton and has accordingly the great merit of being one of the very rare Anglos to teach French colonial history en français, muses about the difference between the role of government and the burden of taxation in the French colonial context and in our own day. He does not take the current PM to task, but rather the system writ large. His assessment is rather pessimistic:

Obviously, I am not arguing that we should return to this bloody and bloody-minded period of our history. [...] But Louis XIV’s answer to what government is for would have been very straightforward. The sovereign (in this case, the king) was the protector and chief magistrate of the realm. The sovereign defended the country from foreign invaders and preserved civil order. The sovereign made laws that regulated trade, business, and industry. The sovereign even protected the realm’s forests and waterways. The sovereign ensured that everyone had access to justice. And that was about it. Local communities largely administered themselves and the inhabitants looked after each other.

How much have we really evolved since Louis XIV? In getting rid of the bad of the Old Regime, what good things have we lost? Today’s Canadian state has become so ponderous that it seems both to decide everything for us and to never be there when we need it. A modern Canadian prime minister in a majority government enjoys legislative and executive power of which Louis XIV could only have dreamed.

He concludes:

As an historian of the early-modern period, I think we should re-evaluate what government is for because an illiterate peasant (at least, a male, Catholic, French one) at the height of Louis XIV’s absolutist regime enjoyed a lighter and more transparent tax regime, better access to justice, and more autonomy at the community level than Canadians today. Because modern liberal democracy has made us helplessly, hopelessly, horribly free. And as incapable as infants.

Oh, those were simpler times! I don't know what to make of this -- and, judging by the lack of response on the usually comment-rich Active History, other readers have had the same difficulty. Greg, surely you must be pulling our collective leg? Sure, people back in the day were more self-reliant. But if you really want to go down that radically critical road, it seems to me that we should seek our inspiration not among Acadian peasants, but rather in small-scale societies of hunter-gatherers like the Mbuti of the Congo : in a not so distant past, they had no government, or social differentiation for that matter, and no taxes. Now, they were capable folks!

I'm reminded of Hobbes' famous passage on what he saw as the natural condition of mankind: "In such condition there is [...] no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." One doesn't have to endorse all of Hobbes' oeuvre to see that there's something here. I'll take a ponderous government over the limited possibilities of your Early Modern Acadians any day, thank you very much. And, since jumping across centuries is the name of our game, I might as well pull Churchill into the mix: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go chop down a tree and shoot a deer to remind myself that I'm still somewhat more self-reliant than my infant child. Somewhat. I'll be sure to have an ambulance -- paid for by Greg's taxes, of course -- on standby in case I chop or shoot myself in the foot.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Some interesting material connected to James Wolfe and his family will be going on display next month at his childhood home in Westerham, England. Objects on loan to the posthumously-named Quebec House from the related Warde family include the only portrait of him believed to have been painted in his lifetime, and a hand-written book of recipes by his mom Henrietta Wolfe. It also included "his sword", which as of last year was being offered around by the Wardes to a select number of private buyers via one of big auction houses. Notwithstanding the strength of the family's links to the general, this particular sword's provenance proves rather dubious. I take this announcement that the piece will go on display until late 2015 as an indication that potential buyers didn't bite (and a complementary, even more cynical guess would be that the family is hoping to buff up its credentials before offfering it up once again).

Monday, September 9, 2013

I'm dying to get my hands on Joseph Boyden’s latest novel, The Orenda (Hamish Hamilton, September 2013; not to be confused with Kate Cameron's Orenda: A Novel of the Iroquois Nation published by Random House in 1991). Were I more of a hipster, I might take this opportunity to proclaim that I've been into Boyden since before he was cool. Don't get me wrong: Three Day Road (Penguin, 2008) deserved the universal acclaim it received, but Born With a Tooth (Cormorant Books, 2001) too was a delight -- dare I say that it already presaged greatness? It doesn't have anything to do with New France, but read do read it if you enjoy good literature.

Boyden's latest book does have something to do with New France. He turns from the twentieth century to the seventeeth, and explores the delicate and dramatic relations between Aboriginal peoples and Jesuit missionaries. Here is the publishers' blurb :

TheOrenda opens with a brutal massacre and the kidnapping of the young Iroquois Snow Falls, a spirited girl with a special gift. Her captor, Bird, is an elder and one of the Huron Nation’s great warriors and statesmen. It has been years since the murder of his family and yet they are never far from his mind. In Snow Falls, Bird recognizes the ghost of his lost daughter and sees the girl possesses powerful magic that will be useful to him on the troubled road ahead. Bird’s people have battled the Iroquois for as long as he can remember, but both tribes now face a new, more dangerous threat from afar.

Christophe, a charismatic Jesuit missionary, has found his calling amongst the Huron and devotes himself to learning and understanding their customs and language in order to lead them to Christ. An emissary from distant lands, he brings much more than his faith to the new world.

As these three souls dance each other through intricately woven acts of duplicity, small battles erupt into bigger wars and a nation emerges from worlds in flux.

In an interview with Maclean's, Boyden explains: “It seemed like the right time for a story I grew up immersed in”. As a child he spent summers on Christian Island in Georgian Bay, where many Wendats (Hurons) fled in 1649, and attended Brébeuf College, named for one of the Jesuit martyrs. “Even if I did my best to get kicked out of that school—right down to a Mohawk haircut—I think my Jesuit education stuck.”

A Black Robe for the 21st century? Whereas Brian Moore's 1985 novel andits 1991 film adaptation followed a Jesuit protagonist, the narrative voice in The Orenda deftly shifts from Bird the Wendat, to Snow Falls the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), and Christophe the Jesuit. In Boyden's version, by the way, the Jesuit is not a Black Robe, but a "Crow".

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Following-up on the announcement by the Quebec government of a reform of the teaching of history, the Montreal Gazette's blog wonders Does history + values = votes for the PQ?, and, rhetorically, "what treatment would the fall of New France receive in the new history curricula proposed by the PQ?"

I must confess that I have a hard time keeping up with the news. During the second week of August, the 17th annual Fêtes de la Nouvelle-France were celebrated in Quebec City. Louis Bolduc Day was celebrated in Ste. Genevieve. In Montréal, the Musée Pointe-à-Callière held its annual public market, 18th century-style (our friends from the Regiment de La Sarre were showing off their moves).

Last month the Ottawa Citizen ran a story on botanist Pehr Kalm's visit to New France, and the Minnesota news outlet MinnPost an biographical sketch of Louis Hennepin. The StarPress, of Muncie, Indiana, meanwhile published some musings about the identity of the first white man to set foot in what would become Indiana: Marquette, Jolliett, La Salle?

Friday, August 30, 2013

Some readers may remember indignant calls earlier this year for a commemoration of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 (see here, here and here). While the Canadian government remains disappointingly inactive on this front, at least one event is planned. The Land Claims Agreements Coalition, which regroups the modern treaty organizations in this country, will be holding a one-day symposium entitled "Creating Canada: From the Royal Proclamation to Modern Treaties" on October 7th at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. The draft program is very compelling, and includes historians (Colin Calloway and Jim Miller), legal scholars (Brian Slattery, to name but one), and politicians (Matthew Coon Come and Bernard Valcourt, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, etc.).

The announcement for the symposium notes that an original copy of the Proclamation will be on display onsite. Presumably the Canadian Museum of Civilization will have it on display for some time, more than one day. So why doesn't the museum advertise this more widely? You'd think they'd put a bit of weight behind this foundational document, and try to whip up some well-deserved interest among the public.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

I came across this neat online review and glimpse of the inside of a new book, Mauvais Garçon: Portaits de tatoués which reproduces and analyses photographs taken by the French authorities of the tattooed bodies of some rough fellows who passed through the Bataillons d'Afrique during the 1890s-1930s. The photos are quite striking, and actually not without reminding me of tattooing in New France.
﻿﻿﻿

In North America, Europeans encountered the practice among indigenous peoples. The French referred to it as "piquage", i.e. pricking (the modern word "tatouage", like the English one, is Tahitian in origin and only entered the language as a result of the Pacific explorations of the 1770s). The subject of tattooing in New France has been rather well researched at this point. Over a decade ago a certain Carolyn Christina Cross wrote an M.A. thesis on "Body Marking Within New France" (available online here); Stephanie Chaffray touched on the subject in her Ph.D. dissertation (also available online); more recently, Arnaud Balvay did too in L'Épée et la Plume (much of which is available via Googlebooks).There is some juicy material on the subject in the historical records, but my favourite is what Captain Pécaudy de Contrecoeur wrote to his eldest son, who had just joined the Troupes de la Marine and was about to depart on his first campaign: "Take good care not to commit the foolishness of having yourself tattooed: I prohibit it."Mothers and fathers, don't let your children grow up to be French colonial soldiers.P.-F.-X.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Exciting news: Montreal's McCord and Stewart Museums are amalgamating! It was announced two days ago (see Global News's coverage here). In the short term both museums will apparently continue to exist under their old names and offer their own programming, but their administration and rich collections will be integrated. The McCord holds some 1 440 000 artefacts and the Stewart another 27 000, including some real treasures of New France (and some dubious: I have misgivings about Membertou's gourd at the Stewart, for instance).

The synergy of the two institutions promises some great exhibitions, programming, and research.

Friday, August 9, 2013

I wish that there were more Randy Boswells around. There is far too little historical content in the mainstream Canadian media. Boswell's latest is a piece entitled "Discovery of 19th century document sheds light on the unearthing of astrolabe reportedly used by Samuel de Champlain", which reports on Carleton University professor Bruce Elliott’s discovery of an 1893 journal penned by steamship captain Daniel Cowley. This journal, which has been since May on exhibit at the Pinhey's Point museum just west of Ottawa, sheds a little light on the circumstances in which the astrolabe was discovered. “It was in my desk on the steamer for some months afterwards,” Cowley writes.

Readers should be advised, though, that Boswell and his editors somewhat overstate the extent to which the document tells us something new about whether or not the object ever belonged to Champlain. And the article glosses over the fact that Prof. Elliott has had the journal in his possession for over a decade, if my memory serves me. It seems to me that this places the excitement over a "discovery" in the realm of journalistic hyperbole. Still, this is a good excuse to get the public to think about the looming figure and about an object that has taken on iconic proportions in the historical consciousness of Canadians.

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Engraving accompanying Louis
Hennepin's Nouvelle découverte d'un grand pays... (1697), where Louisiana
is depicted as a land of plenty inhabited
by calumet-wielding Natives.

A new exhibition at the Historic New Orleans Collection, "Pipe Dreams: Louisiana under the French ﻿
Company of the Indies, 1717-1731" covers... well, the title says it all. Showcasing over one hundred items from the period, it tells the story of the Compagnie des Indes's monopoly over the colony during its formative years. It addresses such themes such as Louisiana’s relation to the company’s other trade outposts, which stretched as far as the Indian Ocean; the establishment of a colonial capital at New Orleans; the popularity of tobacco in early modern France and the development of a tobacco culture in Louisiana. The directors of the Compagnie indeed dreamed for a time of creating there a French version of the Chesapeake. The HNOC's exhibition also looks at the diverse Native, European and African population of the colony during the company years, with a special focus on the war which pitted the French and their allies against the Natchez between 1729 and 1731.

﻿﻿One of the gems of the exhibition, which runs until September 15th, is the lavishly illustrated manuscript of Marc-Antoine Caillot's "Relation du voyage de la Louisianne [sic] ou Nouvelle France fait par le Sr. Caillot en l'année 1730". Erin M. Greenwald, the curator responsible for this exhibition at HNOC, rediscovered it herself, edited it, and published it just this spring under the title A Company Man.

Monday, July 29, 2013

In an opinion piece published today in the Globe and Mail, historian Charlotte Gray proposes that the August statutory holiday celebrated in most Canadian provinces and known most commonly as the Civic Holiday be renamed Champlain Day. Part of me feels like punching holes through her glib arguments, but part of me thinks: Why the hell not? Champlain is, no question, one of the most endearing figures of French colonial / Early Canadian history.

Gray doesn't allude to it, but as it happens there is a whole lot of Champlain-related stuff going on this Civic Holiday... uhm, I mean Champlain Day, Monday, August 5th, at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau. Canoeists who have been retracing part of the explorer's journey along the Ottawa River as part of the fundraising "Défi Champlain" will be landing there through the afternoon. The Museum, in collaboration with the Réseau du patrimoine gatinois, and the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg Nation, will meanwhile be holding a day of dance, music and traditional knowledge demonstrations. As this coincides neatly with Quebec's "Mois de l'archéologie", museum curators Jean-Luc Pilon and Yves Monette will also give talks on the archeological evidence of the French and Algonquin presence along the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers. The irony here is that August 5th is not a holiday in Quebec...
P.-F.-X.